Hello from SurveyMonkey!
After a several-months-long hiatus, welcome back to our Research Newsletter. A lot has happened since we last emailed you in May. Here’s a brief recap:
Fortune published an article early this summer citing our data that nearly half of remote workers planned to quit if forced to return in person. They weren’t bluffing! Five months later, the “Great Resignation” is in full swing, with all-time high rates of workers quitting their jobs. Look for more data from us on this topic soon...
In July, the New York Times used our data to examine inflation, finding that nine in 10 people had noticed prices going up, and seven in 10 were worried the increases would continue for an extended period. Much more data on supply shock below...
In August, our “Invest in You” survey with CNBC and Acorns revealed a stark gender disparity in cryptocurrency investing, with women (and especially women of color) lagging behind men in adding crypto to their investing portfolios.
In September, Axios cited our data on school mask mandates, showing that nearly twice as many parents support mask mandates as oppose them.
Aside from all that, SurveyMonkey rebranded with a new name: Momentive. Read more about the name change from our CEO here and Jon here, but don’t expect too much to change in this newsletter. Our research team is looking forward to sharing our work with you more regularly again, and in even more ways: with new formats, improved data visualizations, and more partner projects.
We use this newsletter as a way to spotlight what we think is some of our most interesting data. This week, we’re focusing on the consumer impact of recent supply chain issues, and how the upcoming holiday season may be affected.
If you’ve received it in your inbox, it’s likely you took one of our research surveys and signed yourself up to hear more from us. Maybe you’ll recognize some of the questions below as ones that you answered yourself! Regardless, we hope to pique your curiosity with each new installment, and we’re grateful you’re reading. On to the data!
Supply chain issues persist into the holiday shopping season
If you’ve made any significant purchases recently, you may have experienced longer than usual delays due to the global supply chain snarl. In a survey we conducted in late August, 54% of people in the U.S. said they had experienced shipping/stock issues when making a purchase recently—and what’s most surprising is that even the big names in retail (Amazon, Walmart, Target, Apple) have left their customers waiting for their purchases to come in.
To dig deeper, we ran twin studies in the U.S. and U.K. so we could better anticipate what impact these supply chain shocks will have on the upcoming holiday shopping season.
What did we find? Many people are getting a jump start on their holiday shopping, and most people are planning to get back to a more “normal” holiday season in general despite the continued uncertainty from COVID.
Nearly half of U.S. adults express concern about supply chain issues affecting their holiday shopping: 45% are very or somewhat worried about being able to purchase the items they want for the upcoming holiday season. An ambitious 38% of Americans plan on starting their holiday shopping by October, while just 14% plan to wait until December.
Shoppers continue to pivot to online shopping, with 44% saying they plan to do more of their shopping online. More than half of Americans (55%) say they plan to buy clothing as gifts this holiday season, followed by games/toys (41%), gift cards (33%), home goods (32%), and technology (32%).
Nearly half (46%) of adults in the U.S. expect to travel this upcoming holiday season, and the number of people saying they’re planning to cancel their usual holiday travel plans is cut in half from 2020 (from 50% to 22%).
A similar story plays out in the U.K., where 41% of adults say they’re likely to travel for the holidays this year. Last year, 63% cancelled their travel plans entirely; this year, just 31% expect to do so.
Brits are less concerned about supply chain issues affecting their holiday shopping plans: just 31% are worried, compared with 45% of Americans. Twice as many Brits as Americans (29% vs. 14%) say they don’t plan to do any holiday shopping this year.
Among those who plan to spend on gifts this year, about half of Brits (52%) plan to spend on clothing, followed by games/toys (31%), home goods (29%), and technology (29%). Just 17% of Brits plan to buy gift cards, compared with 33% of Americans.
For more on this research, check out our blog posts below:
That’s all from us this week! Thank you for reading, and look for more research to drop into your inbox in a few weeks.